Indian students rank near the bottom on PISA, a global test of learning standards conducted in 74 nations this year. TIMSS, another standardized international test, produced similar results earlier in 2003.

This is the first time that Indian students participated in PISA. Students from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu took theProgram for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, coordinated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prior to this participation, students from Indian states of Orissa and Rajasthan took a similar test called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2003.
Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh rank high on human development indicators among Indian states. The India Human Development Report 2011, prepared by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), categorized them as “median” states, putting them significantly ahead of the national average. IAMR is an autonomous arm of India’s Planning Commission.
Himachal Pradesh ranked 4 and Tamil Nadu 11 in literacy rates on India’s National Family Health Survey released in 2007. However, in the PISA study, Tamil Nadu ranked 72 and Himachal Pradesh 73, just ahead of the bottom-ranked Kyrgyzstan in mathematics and overall reading skills. Shanghai, China’s biggest city, topped the PISA rankings in all three categories—overall reading skills, mathematical and scientific literacy. The new entrants included Costa Rica, Georgia, India (Himachal Pradesh & Tamil Nadu), Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Venezuela (Miranda), Moldova, United Arab Emirates. PISA 2009+ involved testing just over 46 000 students across these ten economies, representing a total of about 1 377 000 15-year-olds.
In Tamil Nadu, only 17% of students were estimated to possess proficiency in reading that is at or above the baseline needed to be effective and productive in life. In Himachal Pradesh, this level is 11%. “This compares to 81% of students performing at or above the baseline level in reading in the OECD countries, on an average,” said the study. In other words, only a little over one in six students in Tamil Nadu and nearly one in 10 students in Himachal Pradesh are performing at the OECD average. A similar trend was observed in mathematical and scientific literacy, too.
The 2003 TIMSS study ranked India at 46 among 51 countries. Indian students’ score was 392 versus average of 467 for the group. These results were contained in a Harvard University report titled “India Shining and Bharat Drowning”.
These results are not only a wake-up call for the “India Shining” brigade, but also raise serious questions about the credibility of India’s western cheerleaders like Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria and New York Times’ columnist Tom Friedman.